


It Doesn't All Go

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [6]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: (again), F/M, Feelings Realization, Female Friendship, Friends to Lovers, Interviews, Loneliness, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pining, Post-Canon, Requited Love, Reunions, Romantic Gestures, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:06:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27746443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: Following her win, Beth flies to California for a holiday. But she's missing someone. Her thoughts—and her friends—won't let her forget it.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020483
Comments: 49
Kudos: 372





	It Doesn't All Go

**Author's Note:**

> _Well, it's been building up inside of me/For, oh, I don't know how long_ \- The Beach Boys

At 20, World Champion-defeater Beth Harmon makes plans to laze around California and be anyone but the loose-ends person she warned Georgi Girev against growing into. She only has the rest of her life to be whoever she’s becoming post-victory and, as both of her mothers have demonstrated, that isn’t always as long as you think. It’s the winter of 1968 and she’d rather play limbo than be stuck in it.

On the boardwalk, she stands out as much for her fair skin as for her very specific niche of celebrity. Sunglasses help with both—warding off the glare and the persistence of chess-playing college boys spending their Christmas vacation working on their tan. All of their offers to take her to lunch, teach her to surf, buy her a drink shimmer like an oasis and blur into a background hum as present and undemanding as the waves hitting the shore. She isn’t looking for anything like that. The last man who sat across a table from Beth wanting to know what was going on in her head was unseated by her deployment of the Queen’s Gambit. Anyway, none of these blonds are the one she spends her nights with, the one thousands of miles away and right here in her dreams.

The healthiest thing to do seems to be neither concentrating on nor avoiding chess-related thoughts. She didn’t pack any of her most-read books in the whirlwind of arriving home from Moscow and departing for L.A., tossing an extra swimsuit into her luggage where a travel board or two would normally fit, but she doesn’t resist replaying her match against Borgov in her mind. It’s habit. When it’s too difficult to play the pieces out across the glittering water, she lies back on her towel and lets the game progress on the inside of her eyelids. Sometimes, she drags her fingers through the sand while imagining every move. Other times, she just falls asleep.

A routine she develops by the end of her first week and a half as a beach bum is wandering down to the ocean at the sweet, thick end of the afternoon. She passes shellshocked parents carrying exhausted children slumped against their chests and people her own age who reveal severe tan lines when they lift their sunglasses or tug at the straps of their bikinis. With the day crowd diminished, Beth grabs a prime spot by the water. It slides across the sand like each time might be the last. Using her bare hands, she moulds the sand into a raised plateau, then traces a grid of 64 squares on top. Whether she mentally plays a game on it or not, she carves a moat around the edges at sunset, extending that into a trough to stretch towards the water’s edge. She sits there as the ocean laps up her board and begins to redistribute the sand into regular old beach.

Evenings are for her gentle holiday flirtation with rum at a bar that spills the songs of the Beach Boys from its open windows. The options are numerous. When all that gets boring, Beth packs up and goes to San Francisco.

“Beth?”

The voice—as rough and sugary as the near-crystallized butter pecan ice cream she’s licking—stops her on the sidewalk on her second day in the city. She spins on her toes to see Cleo already reaching for her; her hand closes on Beth’s shoulder with a fond squeeze and her smile widens at how Beth’s face changes as she recognizes her.

“Cleo! What are you doing here?” she asks while they exchange cheek-kisses.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know if you first tell me where you got that.” Cleo gestures towards Beth’s ice cream, which the sun has gone ahead and begun to thaw in the absence of her tongue.

“Umm,” she starts, still distracted by this vibrant person from her past abruptly in front of her, “it’s back up the street.”

“Show me?”

Cleo nods at the same moment of asking. That’s something Beth admired about the French during her time in Paris, she’s now remembering—the way they could coat a conversation in a meringue of buoyant geniality while pushing their agenda hard beneath the surface. It’s like chess can be: the flirtation of quickly swapping pieces you can stand to lose in order to clear space for the crushing combo you’ve subtly moved into place in the flurry. A game like that is what her and Cleo’s mutual friend in New York would call ‘pretty.’

“Mine might be melted by the time we get there,” Beth says with a laugh, licking a dribble of ice cream off the back of her hand as they head back the way she came.

“Oh dear.”

Cleo’s tone is sympathetic and her gasp is loud when Beth tosses her ice cream onto the sidewalk, a dueler whipping off his glove. A dog being walked in the opposite direction forces a collision course, snapping up the cone and gobbling the pooling scoop until its owner tugs it away. The women laugh and Cleo links her arm familiarly through Beth’s.

“Now we can start at the same time,” Beth explains.

“I’ll buy yours; you’ve already paid once.”

“No way. It’ll be my treat.”

They return to the shop where Cleo pays, then, as they’re leaving, throws a saucy wink back at the teenage boy behind the till who barely remembered to charge them because he was so lost in gawking at her. Beth understands. The model’s beauty has only deepened since she saw her last. If she were more reckless, she’d drop this ice cream too and kiss Cleo to feel the tip of her nose press into her cheek like it did that drunken night. But she’s grown up and away from the urge to fling herself into that fleeting affair again—all it could be with Cleo’s aptitude for wandering and Beth’s very incompatible hope to, one day, feel completely at home somewhere. She’s just happy to see her friend.

“A man I know is showing his work in a gallery here,” Cleo begins as they find their way into a park.

“Oh, at the Museum of Art?”

“No, a tiny place. Dark and, um, what’s the… _pretentious_.” Beth laughs at Cleo’s sly smile. “You would hardly notice this gallery as you walk past. I only feel obligated to come because some of the pictures are of me.”

The way she says this makes Beth raise her eyebrows as she feels she’s supposed to, but she is also intrigued.

“Of you? Clothed or otherwise?”

Cleo grins at the presumption of scandal. Her front teeth kiss her ice cream.

“I’ve left those days behind,” she says. “It isn’t shocking anymore and there’s no other part of the process to take pleasure in. Sitting? Posing? Having a man point a camera at me and feeling so important about himself? This is as exciting as, as taking out the garbage.”

Beth full out laughs.

“But you know,” Cleo insists.

“Yes, I have been photographed many times. Not as many as you, but… many.”

“Dull.”

“Usually.”

They stroll for several minutes, warping their treats into slimmed, manageable hills where the heat of the day did its damage while they were talking.

Chewing the cone, Beth notes, “You’re letting your hair grow. It looks nice.”

“They all want something softer now. _Softer_ , _longer_. I adapt.”

“It suits you.” Finally, she asks a question that’s been shadowing her since their encounter began. “Are you coming from Paris?”

“New York. I curse out the cold one day and three days later, I am eating _this_.”

Beth smiles, but it’s tight and perfunctory as she frames her next question in her head. She scraps it. Better to just ask outright. This is Cleo, after all. The empress of blunt.

“Did you see Benny?”

She’s anticipating a light comment or a flippant joke on the subject. Instead, Cleo halts and stares at Beth’s face carefully.

“Yes. Once. We had lunch.”

“That’s nice.”

Beth’s ready to back off from this topic now, scared of the intensity of her friend’s sudden focus. She’ll ask more about the gallery, if Cleo has many friends in the city, when she’s heading back to Paris.

“When are you—”

“Heartsick.”

“What?” trips from Beth’s mouth.

Her friend’s considering frown is as small as a pout.

“That is the word I would use. I would say that Benny seemed heartsick. Fine, of course. Surviving on coffee and arrogance, but oh, he yearns.” And Cleo doesn’t let up. “I think he is in love with you. I was jealous, but only for a moment. Jealous on behalf of the sad girl I was when we were involved, a girl who would have done many stupid things to be loved.”

Beth shakes her head, smile a denial.

“I don’t think—”

“Have you spoken?”

“Not since Moscow. I called… once… but he didn’t pick up.” She shrugs. “And then I left for California.”

She finds herself blinking quickly and she looks up into the sun as a trio of chattering people pass them.

“I know I should send him a card or something,” Beth continues when Cleo waits her out, “to thank him for his help.”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t do it unless you are sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“That this is what you want,” Cleo explains. “Friendship. A flavour of friendship so faint that you can send each other a _card_ now and then, like distant relatives who don’t really care for one another’s company.”

Betty studies her.

“You’re not jealous, but you are protective,” she concludes.

“I’m nosy,” Cleo corrects, suddenly smiling and leaning in to shove gently against her. “Never mind. Let’s just enjoy the day. Someone told me it’s going to rain tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Beth whines. “I’m having my hair done.”

“ _Dommage_.”

“ _Oui_.”

Despite ending her weeks in California with San Francisco’s cooler, damper clime, Beth boards the plane back to Kentucky feeling overwarm. She slumps into her seat, weary and sunbaked as one of the children carried home from the beach. She wishes someone would carry her home.

There’s a dusting of snow across her front lawn. For now, her pink flowers are frozen, the colour saturated to something desperately beautiful, as though the blooms are pleading for their lives even as frost crackles up the stems. Beth feels for them as she hunkers into her house, layering a wool sweater over her turtleneck. The emptiness is cool and still after the sound and vibrancy of her trip. She adjusts the heat and unpacks, smiling as she hangs a couple new things in her closet. The house smells sour somehow, so she opens a window and retreats from the chilly gust with a yelp, opting to do some vigorous vacuuming downstairs to stoke her body temperature back up.

The next day, Beth opens a damp stack of mail and makes a few calls. Her bank to discuss her finances following her big win in Russia and subsequent oceanside getaway, Harry because she isn’t afraid of or confused by how she feels when she hears his voice over the phone, and Jolene. It feels so good to talk to Jolene that Beth spontaneously invites her to drive over from Louisville and stay the next weekend.

Ah, she realizes when her friend arrives, this is why the amount of mail piled up outside her front door was large but wieldy—Jolene informs her that she came by one day and collected a bunch.

“You can’t leave your house like that,” she says in a tone of wry scolding, leaning back in one of Beth’s plush chairs. “People can see that you haven’t been home. Anyway, your neighbours and who knows who else are aware of who lives in this house. You’re famous and fame means money. Shit. You’re lucky you weren’t robbed.”

“So I can’t take a holiday?” Beth asks, just to provoke her.

“Your life is one holiday after another. What is it you need a holiday from?”

Jolene laughs and Beth’s shoulders shake as she joins her. They both know that this assessment is simultaneously completely ridiculous and totally serious. When has Beth’s life been easy? With the regimented tournament schedules and people to tell her where to be and when, when has her life been difficult?

As she flips through the new mail, they switch to discussing Jolene’s life instead. One of the few things Beth handled the moment she landed in the States was mailing a cheque to return the money her friend lent her for Moscow. Jolene informs her that she’s continued to save up and begun stalking a few colleges where she may want to study, to see what the admissions process will be like and to investigate the instructors’ qualifications. As for where she is right now, well, apparently, she’s enjoying the latest gift from her rich lawyer: a top-of-the-line television.

“Rick’s furnishing my apartment,” Jolene states, grinning, “one piece at a time. We’ll see how many rooms he’s done by the time I can afford to move out of there and buy my own little house, like you. Smaller, though.” She gazes around for a minute. “You could fit a whole suburban family in here, Cracker.”

“But then I couldn’t offer you whichever room you’d like when you came to stay,” Beth jokes back.

“You lonely though?”

The question is sudden and she hiccups a laugh mostly because she wasn’t prepared.

“I’ve never really had time to think about it,” she says slowly.

“I know what this place looked like the last time I came to see you,” Jolene reminds her. “I know the booze and the pills were behind that, but what was behind the booze and the pills? Gotta think it was you feeling sorry for yourself over something. You can only rail at life for making you an orphan so long, Beth.”

“You think you’re so clever.”

“I _am_ so clever.”

They share a look of quiet hilarity. Then, Beth sighs and shrugs.

“I suppose I am lonely. I like the space, but it’s hard to see the purpose of it some days. A lot of the time, I feel as though I’m keeping it up for Alma, because she made a home here and it should be even easier for me to do that than it was for her, with no one else’s taste to accommodate.”

“Sure.”

“I have this memory of my mother… before Alma… I see it so clearly sometimes, when I’m falling asleep.” Beth’s vision loses focus as her mind drifts to the indistinct edges of the memory. Abruptly, she blinks and darts her gaze to her friend. “She said I shouldn’t be scared to be alone.”

“You think that’s good advice?”

“Do you?” Beth cups her chin in her hand and waits earnestly for an answer.

“Usually, if you’re alone, you don’t have any choice about that. But I can’t imagine not being scared. Even if you don’t act it, you’re going to feel it. Being scared can be useful. The idea of working under entitled white people my whole life scares the hell out of me, as much as it makes me mad, which is motivation to become a lawyer myself. Have my own office where nobody gives me suspicious looks when I touch the coffee pot or take a bathroom break. You have to be scared and you have to be alone, and, sometimes, you’re both at the same time. But _lonely_ is different.”

“What do you mean?”

Jolene twists her mouth to the side as she thinks and Beth takes a sip of her cooling tea.

“Maybe lonely doesn’t have to be scared? If you think it’s going to last forever, then, yes, but loneliness has something hopeful about it. You want something. You’re looking _forward_. You know?”

“But loneliness is miserable,” Beth argues with an ironic laugh.

“Are you miserable?”

“Not anymore.”

Her friend gives her a look.

“There you go. Sounds like your loneliness is something you can solve.”

Smiling, Beth looks down at her lap.

“I don’t know about that.”

“Bullshit,” Jolene declares, reaching over to shove her knee. “Of course you do. You’ve been playing the whole thing out in your head, like you do. You have to do something about it in reality.”

“I’m not lonely with _you_ here.”

“I’m not staying. I’m getting back in my beautiful car two days from now and driving off. You’re not lonely for me anyway.” She gives Beth a knowing smile. “You’ve got your mind on someone else.”

“I don’t know.”

“Quit saying that.”

“Benny’s… He’s…” She sighs.

“Clearly the one you’re thinking about. The one you’re lonely for? That’s ok. What’s the last thing he said to you?”

“‘Go beat him,’” Beth recites. “About Borgov.”

“I guess that’s its own kind of love letter. Do you want to be with him?”

“It doesn’t feel that simple.”

She rifles loosely through the mail again as Jolene crosses her legs in a show of impatience.

“Why not?”

“I could use a drink for this conversation,” Beth says, voice gravelly as it scrapes the bottom of her register.

“Drink your fucking tea then.”

Beth swallows some with petulantly narrowed eyes.

“What I do about Benny feels… complicated.”

“You’re the best chess player in the world or something, aren’t you? You can figure some romantic shit out,” Jolene counters.

“Theoretically.”

“He is clearly devoted to you, so we don’t need to talk about that.” Beth laughs in protest, but her friend goes on. “What do you want from him?”

“After Paris, when I was here, before you came, before I spiralled… I couldn’t tell what I enjoyed more: turning him on or turning him away.”

“You were spiraling even then.”

“No, this was before the drinking.”

“I know what you went through,” Jolene assures her. “You told me when I turned up and helped keep your sorry ass off the floor. You were dealing with that lawyer and your mother’s husband and buying the house. Beth, that was stressful. I’m sure you were already breaking down. Whatever you said to Benny then, well, you were not in a state to make a thoroughly considered choice about that. You were already in survival mode; I know, I’ve been there too.”

“I just felt… like I couldn’t deal with him. I couldn’t do both, have him pushing me and be trying to handle the practical shit. Chess felt like an entirely different world. He’ll always be tied up in that.”

“Yeah, but you’re settled now. You’re comfortable. Are you still putting him off for those old reasons that don’t matter anymore?”

“Maybe! But I don’t know how to reach out to him. I don’t think—”

Thumbing idly through envelopes, one she didn’t notice before slides out. Beth picks it up and rotates it so she can read the return address. She gasps. The handwriting’s tidier than she’s used to seeing it, the strokes clean and even and unlike the letters and numbers he dashes across a notepad to record his moves during play.

“It’s from Benny.”

“I didn’t figure it was the water bill making you perk up like that.”

The envelope crumples against her shaking fingers and she tears into it. Her laugh is brief and violent.

“Something funny?” Jolene wonders in a concerned tone.

“He sent me a card. He sent me a fucking _card_.”

“They can’t all be rich lawyers, honey. He at least could’ve had flowers delivered or something though.”

“No,” Beth says, lifting her eyes to her friend’s face and tapping the card against her palm. She smiles. “This is good. This is something. I’ll tell you why it’s funny in a minute.”

“Better be good or I’m gonna think you poured whiskey in that tea.”

The note in the card is as personal as it can be in a few short lines; mainly, it’s a vessel for the invitation folded inside. The Chess Federation wants her to make an appearance at a Chicago open. Not to play, but to submit herself to being photographed, bombarded with questions, and otherwise lauded to the point of extreme discomfort. Maybe throwing this attention on her is their attempt to make up for denying her financial assistance for Moscow. Maybe they think she wants that—their glamorous American heroine. Most probably they couldn’t care less about her beyond understanding that her presence would be a draw for anyone familiar with the name Beth Harmon.

The tournament’s not particularly large or unique, and yet, Benny wants her to go. Even with the rockiness between them before her departure for Russia, he wouldn’t let the Federation simply rope him into something to get to her. She believes he never cared so little that he would get involved in a scheme to use her for her celebrity. With the card clutched in one hand and the invitation in the other, Beth decides she’ll just have to hear the full story from Benny himself.

“Ok, Cracker, you go see about that,” Jolene urges sleepily when Beth creeps back downstairs that night.

Her heart is loud in her ears as she waits for him to answer the phone. As if it’ll help her hear better, she closes her eyes and concentrates on the ring. The blanket draped around her shoulders nearly slips off when he picks up and she startles.

“Hello?” Did she wake him?

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Ah, you got my letter.”

If he _was_ asleep a minute ago, he’s nevertheless capable of interpretive leaps.

“Well, it wasn’t really a letter,” Beth challenges with a smile. “Three sentences in a card is not a letter.”

“I’m a man of few words.”

She laughs aloud, then lets the sound drop into air as she recalls Jolene, trying to get to sleep upstairs.

“I’m going to need to know more about this event,” she says. “It’s soon.”

“It wasn’t that soon when I sent the letter.”

“ _Card_. And I know, but I can’t help that. I wasn’t at home to receive it.”

“So I gathered. Eventually. For a while, I just thought you were ignoring me.”

“No,” is all Beth can say as her throat suddenly becomes thick.

“The Federation wants it to be me.”

“What to be you?”

“They want me to do the big interview with you,” Benny explains. “In collaboration with _Life_. I don’t know why they’ve decided just now to act as our handlers, but there you have it.”

“What do you mean _with_ me? Both of us interviewed?”

“No, they want me to ask the questions. It’s supposed to be conversational or something. They have some idea of the tone being more engaging if the two of us just talk our way through it all, letting the questions happen organically. That’s how they pitched it to me.”

“You agreed.”

“You sound surprised.”

 _And you sound good_ , she wants to say. _Why do you have to sound so good over the phone and make me miss you? I was working so hard at not missing you._

“I don’t know if you caught this, but I don’t think the interview’s really about you,” Beth teases gently.

“I can concentrate on somebody else when it’s only for a few dozen questions.”

“Really?”

“No, but I can when it’s you. It’s easy to talk to you.”

She wants to agree with this but can’t immediately think of a way that wouldn’t sound forced and fumbling. Regardless, that’s not the aim of the interview. No one—not _Life_ , not the Federation—cares about her relationship to Benny. They just see two masterful domestic chess players and hope for publicity and tens of thousands of copies of the magazine sold.

“And they’re paying you, I suppose.”

“Of course. I’m Benny Watts.” She smiles to hear him poke fun at himself and wishes they were already together. “I was the face of chess excellence in this country before a kid from Kentucky went skipping down the steps of some orphanage one day and decided to cut down the ego of every player in her path.”

“Thank god they didn’t hire you to write my biography.”

“Might not be that bad. I know a thing or two about you.”

“You do,” Beth agrees.

There’s a pause.

“You gonna do it? Chicago? The interview?”

“Sitting in a room with you for an hour can’t be worse than flying from New York to Russia with a shady suit from the State Department.”

“That’s the spirit. See you in two weeks.”

He’s gone before she can mention that there are a thousand things she wants to say to him, or list even one.

Chicago’s weather seems harsher than Moscow’s. It’s February and icy wind whips off the lake and slices across her cheeks whenever she steps outside. Thankfully, that won’t have to be too often as the large hotel hosting the event is the same one in which she’ll be staying for its duration. She hasn’t bumped into Benny yet, but as she strolls down the hallway to the elevators, she wonders which room is his.

Downstairs, Beth recognizes a couple of faces in the newly arrived competitors milling around. She has time for a few hellos before lounging photographers pick up on her presence and try for candids. But she’s too seasoned for that; she poses and averts her eyes from the firing of their flashes, her professionalism stunning them into not crowding her. They grow more respectful and the open’s organizers show up to greet Beth formally, providing another photo op. Someone guides her to stand next to a welcome sign for the event and she passes the next half hour answering the lobbed questions of the journalists who turned up to pair off with their paper’s photographer.

The first matches won’t be played until the following day and, because they’re eager to photograph Beth observing—casting her as some sort of guardian angel figure above the heads of the zealous less-blessed—they’ve planned on her dedicating whatever amount of time she (ha) sees fit to interacting with the press. Under regular circumstances, she would buck this expectation, but today, she’s a step ahead, suggesting she begin the big interview she’s here for before the Federation members can hustle her along to it. She wants to see Benny.

The interview isn’t going to take place in the conference room or business centre she was picturing. Instead, she’s escorted back to the bank of elevators. Here, she does insist—all she requires is the room number. She can find it on her own. Riding the elevator up, Beth controls her posture, head high and eyes alert. She strides down the padded carpeting of the hallway, which swallows her footsteps, thereby painting surprise across the face of a player (he grips a folded chessboard in his hands with an addict’s mania) emerging from his room as Beth walks past it. Before the man can master himself and request an autograph, she locates the correct room. She gives the door a quick rap. The click of the door opening falls in between her heartbeats, disorienting her inner rhythm, and she doesn’t have time to get it back before Benny’s in front of her.

“You’re here already,” she says.

“Yeah, and you better get in here too,” he responds, looking past her as he reaches to cup the back of her arm, thumb tucking into the crease of her elbow. “That guy across the hall appears to be summoning the courage to approach you.”

Beth doesn’t glance back, just steps forward and lets Benny close them inside the room together.

Immediately, her eyes rove the space. _Pleasant_ , she thinks, hearing her mother’s voice in the sweetest part of her memory. The room is large and well-appointed—Beth spots a chess game in progress and a recording device—with a generous view. The clouds look like snow. There is no one else in the room.

“Are we… waiting for someone?” she asks, hands clasped in front of her.

Benny skirts around her, again touching her (a brush of her upper arm this time), and goes to loom over the chessboard, hands on his hips.

“No. I got the technician or whatever he was out of here as soon as he showed me how to work the recorder. They’ll hear the conversation when they’ve got it on tape. I don’t want somebody watching us talk. How the hell’s it supposed to be organic with us having the back of our necks breathed on?” He shifts his weight and twirls his hand above the pieces as though casting a spell, glancing from them to Beth. “What would you do here?”

She smirks to herself and rolls her lips together before crossing the room to join him. This is as good of a reintroduction as any other, really. Familiar territory. Ignoring the recording machine on one side and the prominent bed on the other. They’re far from Benny’s basement apartment now, so why does it feel so similar? Why does Beth study the board without really studying the board? Why does she wait for him to say something, any damn thing, that’s not about chess?

“The knight,” she says, indicating a destination square.

“No way. The bishop.”

“The bishop’s well-positioned. It’ll be hard to move him back.”

“But you won’t need to move him back if you move this pawn—” Benny rests a fingertip on a piece. “—up. There’s time for that within the next four moves.”

“You’ll need the bishop right where it is in three,” Beth counters.

Knowing him to be stubborn, she plays the scenario out before he can waste the time debating it. She waves a hand across her work.

“See?”

“Huh.” He fits his thumb against his chin, digging in, then shifts it up to rub across his bottom lip. Beth tears her gaze away.

“I assumed the Federation people set this up for us to play, but it was you, wasn’t it?”

“I was early. I got bored.”

“You _came_ early,” she interprets, “and brought the set with you knowing you’d be waiting for me.”

She shoots him a look that dares contradiction.

“I wanted some time to think,” he says.

“Because you couldn’t do that on the drive?”

“Believe me, I tried.”

For the first time, Benny fixes his eyes on her and stares with purpose. She can feel it. It’s nerve-wracking, making her laugh awkwardly and look away.

“We should start,” she proposes.

“Sure.”

He gestures to one of the armchairs that’s pulled up to the table on which the chessboard rests and goes to fool with the recording device. Beth drags the chair around to the side and rests her elbow on the table, shunning the game. If she shows any further interest in what Benny’s got on the board, she’ll never get him back on track with the interview.

She smooths the hem of her ice-blue dress over her knees and flicks her eyes up to Benny in time to catch his amused grin at how she’s reimagined the setup. He tows his chair into position opposite hers. He sits and leans back, skimming the hair out of his face with a careless pass of his hand. He’s in jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt. His necklaces peek out at his throat. She notices herself unconsciously stroking the base of her own throat and stops.

“Beth Harmon,” he says for her and the softly whirring tape. She lifts her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

“Benny Watts.”

They push through his first ten or so questions without too much meandering. Everything he asks is what she would’ve anticipated being asked by any reporter in this situation: has she done anything exciting with her Moscow winnings yet, could she name one or two of the biggest differences between the style of Russian gameplay versus American, how did it feel to beat Vasily Borgov, to whom she had conceded two previous losses? It’s strange to hear these impersonal queries come from Benny’s mouth and she feels herself fidgeting more than she would in front of anyone else.

He reacts.

Without a word, he reaches over and makes black’s next move. She takes a moment before sliding a white pawn forward. His questions grow more interesting, belying the impersonal tone their back-and-forth has boasted thus far, and her answers stretch out. The conversation meanders like one of the snowflakes now drifting past the window. They play throughout.

“I wish you’d called,” he finally says, not meeting her eye, as though it’s a difficult admission.

“I did. You didn’t answer.”

He slips his rook behind his queen.

“I drove to Kentucky.”

“What?” Beth freezes with her fingers closed around the very tip of her remaining bishop.

Benny stares across the short distance at her for what must be a full minute before he folds his hand over the back of hers.

“Harry gave me your address. You weren’t home, obviously, but… I saw your house. I think your neighbour thought I was casing it for a robbery, actually.”

“The one on the righthand side? Oh, he hates me anyway. He thinks I’m a drunk.”

“Well, former.”

They share a smile and, as they do, Beth releases the pawn and rotates her wrist to press her palm to Benny’s.

“You should know that this feeling, the… ah… the missing you…” He motions towards his chest and she thinks she may cry. “It won’t seem to go.”

“I love you.”

She’s borrowed Cleo’s bluntness and allowed Jolene to succeed in pushing her diligently tempered feelings into the open. There’s a weightlessness inside her. It’s startling to realize that Benny might’ve said it first. It sounded oddly like, ‘I drove to Kentucky.’

His fingers flex around her hand. She sits forward expectantly, but when he rises from his chair, he goes to the recorder. Beth hears a click, then the absence of the tape’s muffled spinning. He turns swiftly and gives her a piercing look; she tries to tell him again with her eyes.

“You love me?”

“Yes.”

He yanks his chair out of the way and accidentally bumps the table, knocking some pieces over and sending them rolling across the board and off the edge onto the ground. Beth jumps to her feet and grasps the back of his neck as he tilts his head to kiss her.

There’s one long moment where she loses awareness of everything beyond Benny’s mouth and the ends of his hair tickling the back of her hand. Then, he takes hold of her, low on her hips, and she remembers the bed.

“The machine’s definitely off, right?” she breaks the kiss to ask.

“Definitely off,” he pants back.

She zips her gaze to the side and he follows it to the bed. There’s time for a slight smile before they spring back together, kissing and stumbling out of their shoes—more easily accomplished for Beth, with her slingback heels. She laughs and flounces to the mattress as Benny lifts a foot to wrench his boot off by hand before joining her. They wriggle up the bed, shift and grab, and then things slow with him lying half on top of her. Their kissing is leisurely and deep.

In time, he inches her dress up and she unbuttons his shirt, he draws the straps of her bra down her arms and she whisks his belt free of the loops of his jeans. She likes his hair. She’ll _always_ like his hair. Her fingers tangle in it as the urgency of their bodies mounts, then flatten the back in rapid pats when she’s straining and sweaty, guiding Benny’s hand between their hips. Outside, the snow’s blowing up, down, and sideways, but she’s only capable of moving in one direction: closer to him.

She doesn’t have to shove him away when they’re done because he doesn’t say anything to warrant it. They’re relaxed, loose under the covers. With his arm around her, they breathe steadily and watch the snow fall.

“You said the first time you ever saw me was in Cincinnati, right?” Benny asks.

“In person, yes. But when I was fifteen, I saw your picture on the cover of _Chess Review_.”

Beth feels him twist to look at her.

“Really?”

“The U.S. Champion. At the time,” she teases, angling to see him.

He smiles and doesn’t reply.

“Why do you ask?”

“Hmm?”

“Your question. About when we met.”

“I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking?” Beth pushes, rolling and propping herself up on his chest. His warm hand resettles on her back.

“That I’d like to remember that first time. And that I don’t want there to be a last.”

When she nods, a curl of hair falls into her eyes. With the lightest touch, he brushes it back.


End file.
